The biggest historical concern I’ve had with Cal hiring Tosh Lupoi was whether his strategic deficiencies as a coach were covered up by management from very good to elite coaches like Tedford, Sarkisian, Saban and Lanning, and the first five weeks have laid all those fears bare.
This is not a well-coached football team.
The first team offense is beyond broken, managed by a staff that seems unable to do anything off script, forced to put in backup wide receivers in as running backs, an offensive line mired in mud, wideouts who continue to drop half their passes, and a talented quarterback who has underachieved to an appalling degree. That Jackson Brousseau came in and made Cal look slightly better for this scheme feels even worse, as if the first team really just seems unable to process a an offense that takes over half the practice snaps.
The play calling continues to baffle. If there were changes in how the staff managed the game, they produced near nothing with QB1 in the first half. Rollouts to the short side of the field. Long developing plays for JKS with a slow footed offensive line. Wide receiver screens on 3rd and long. Whatever is happening with this team through the week, it is not translating on gameday.
Despite Cal special teams having a rare good performance (Successful onside kick! Fumble recovery! Huge kickoff return! Punt block!), the offense managed three points from those moments. It’s become a running gag that these Golden Bears take turnovers and turn them right back over to their opponents, and this played out to maximum effect in Vegas.
The Cal defense, the only unit that seemed to be improving, got gashed by the monumental speed of quarterback Jackson Arnold. Injuries didn’t help, but neither did two targeting penalties that wiped out the backside and forced the team on the back unit. When Cal rallied to take the lead in the 4th, the defense immediately surrendered the game under a haze of penalties galore. 39 points to UNLV is a very poor performance, and there are much better ACC quarterbacks on the horizon.
The Bears are definitely a playmaking team, and won their only P4 game because of those plays. But over two-thirds of the plays that happen in their games tend to benefit their opponent. Cal continues to look over aggressive or bizarrely passive depending on the situation, leading to negative football in too many scenarios that does not benefit the team at all.
There were always scenarios in which Cal would struggle under a first year head coach, particularly one who lacked the strategic bona fides to really manage a game. There were hopes that the talent influx Lupoi could bring would raise the ceiling of the team. But that’s all offset by lackluster coaching, which has made the Bears doubly disappointing as expectations have car crashed into reality.
This is the darkest place. This is a very inexperienced staff that appears to be fumbling for solutions. Ron Rivera is patrolling the sidelines with the headset, a director of football overseeing the coaches he signed off on hiring. Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele looks absolutely lost in processing whatever he’s being asked to process, and got turfed up for his efforts.
I don’t know the solution. All I know are the outcomes, which will be an emptied out Memorial Stadium the rest of 2026, a disaffected Cal fanbase opening up their Saturdays for other fall activities, recruits now openly wondering what type of chaos ball they’d be signing up for, and a furious donor base wondering exactly what all those millions in NIL investment were spent on to produce this level of incompetence on the field.
Tosh Lupoi had financial, internal, and overall community buy-in and alignment. In five weeks it’s all but crumbled, under a morass of strategic errors and a group of players unable to play smart or strong on gameday. Course correcting this before the season ends (with Cal now decided underdogs in its next five games) is now priority 1, 2, and 1000, or the Bears could be facing the nightmare cycle of the perpetual rebuild.
Because if things don’t change, this tenure could be doomed before it even starts.
And with realignment negotiations beginning in the coming months, who knows what bleak futures could be on the horizon for our California Golden Bears.
I've been reading "Write For California" for at least three years. The last two years there was a constant drumbeat to fire Wilcox, fire Wilcox, fire Wilcox. Last year they fired Wilcox. They brought in Lupoi who did a good job recruiting. But this year's offense has sputtered and sputtered. This whole week the drumbeat was dump Somerville, dump Somerville, dump Somerville! Put in Rolovich, Put in Rolovich, Put in Rolovich. Lupoi puts in Rolovich. Changes up the offense. Let's the players practice that offense for FOUR (4) days. I saw some success. In a meaningless, out of conference game with a brand new offensive scheme, we had the lead in the fourth quarter. Heck, if the kick returner had stayed in bounds on the kickoff return, we might have won the game. The targeting calls were soft. Why no roughing the passer on the play that concussed JKS? Anyway, I know "Doom and Gloom and fire everybody" is the one play that WFC runs best, but can we at least give the new offense a full week to be implemented?
Expectations that are sky high often lead to extreme disappointment if not met, or only partially fulfilled. All of us who ramped up the hype are experiencing that terrible deflated feeling now.
We expected our inexperienced staff to proceed from crawling/toddling to flat out sprinting in just a few weeks. Silly us.
If we expected a Cigneti type turn around, we should have grabbed Chesney from JMU before a school down south got him.
Those guys developed their chops out of the limelight and glare of humongous expectations. We’ve got what we’ve got. Let’s support the team. They are doing their best (which isn’t very good to be sure), so let’s cheer like we love Cal and hope the coaches/players who need to improve can do so soon.
That’s my $.02 worth. (You get what you pay for…or less.)
Your welcome.